Come'on Economist.
Yes, there is CO2 pollution. Any pollution should be reduced.
Yet the Economist knows the 2 degree "benchmark" is an artificial creation made up for the annual global warming treaty conferences for political reasons. There is no science saying 2 degrees vs. 4 degrees vs. x degrees is the tipping point. The Economist knows that the correlation, or "settled science" showing CO2 leads to global warming is under debate, even by the IPCC.
At least have some honesty in your reporting.

A softer sell would deliver better results for you. Lighten up next time--just provide a link instead of a lengthy self-promotional pitch. You may or may not be correct, but hard-sell marketing is always off-putting.

The peer review system works reasonably well for what it is intended: to filter out bad science.

The problem is not with peer review or communication between scientists, but in the communication with the general public.

Most scientists are not paid for that, nor rewarded in other ways. That is changing, though; more and more, scientists get credit for interacting with the public. The ivory tower is a lot lower than it once was.

The other problem is marketing. Better said: propaganda by parties with vested interests. Outlets like WSJ and Fox, false experts from the Heartland and other front groups, a myriad of websites, and many politicians, are paid to spread doubt about the science. And alas, our educational system has inadequately prepared people to deal with such propaganda. Most people are unable to distinguish a reliable source from one that is likely to be biased. Ample evidence on this blog.

We need better education about how science works and how to judge information (and the importance of judging the source of that information. And public financing of political parties and banning of campaign contributions. Among other things.

How many factories do you think there are in the world? How many cars? How many power plants? How many buildings? How many crude wood and coal stoves for cooking?
The answer in every case is a whole fucking lot.
So, how can these deniers believe that man is not greatly contributing to the carbon count and global warming? How on Earth do you come to the conclusion that, despite the massive impact humans have on the Earth, that humans don't actually have anything to do with it?
Climate change deniers will be reviled and ridiculed when future history books are written. So, to all you deniers, please post your real names and a picture of yourself, so that we'll have the ability to memorialize your stupidity and ignorance for the ages to witness.

Yup, the internet has made so much valid information available, but our capacity to process that information has not kept pace and ah, the wonderful power of marketing! It makes us fat and even changes our global climate.

"Climate change denial is a set of organized attempts to downplay, deny or dismiss the scientific consensus on the extent of global warming, its significance, and its connection to human behavior, especially for commercial or ideological reasons.

Typically, these attempts take the rhetorical form of legitimate scientific debate, while not adhering to the actual principles of that debate. Climate change denial has been associated with the energy lobby, industry advocates and free market think tanks, often in the United States."

Those characteristics are:
1. the identification of conspiracies;
2. the use of fake experts and denigration of established experts and researchers;
3. selectivity / cherry-picking of the evidence;
4. the creation of impossible expectations of what research can deliver (for example, Meme Mine repeating ad nauseam that climate scientists don't say bad things WILL happen, but only that they may happen); and
5. the use of misrepresentation and logical fallacies (for example, suggestions that because climate varies naturally, it follows that human greenhouse gas emissions are not causing climate change).

I must admit that I find it quite amusing to see what the deniers come up with on this forum. And instructive - it forces me to look up the evidence. Regrettably, they haven't yet succeeded in convincing me not to worry. Always when I follow the trail of (purported) evidence to the original source, I find that the 'skeptical' argument can't withstand closer scrutiny.

Well, a good start would be to stop getting your information from Big Oil and its eager minions such as the Wall Street Journal and Fox News and right wing websites. Look for nonpartisan, objective sources.

The Economist is quite conservative, but it isn't a slave to corporate interests. Hence articles like this one.

Meme Mine, I've seen you post this over and over on climate articles all over the web. You misunderstand how science works. Science is about probabilities. Even the asteroid hit that you so often refer to is measured probabilistically. Scientists would never say "this asteroid will hit" or "this asteroid will not hit." They would say "this asteroid is highly likely to hit" or "this asteroid has a 2.7% chance of hitting." How is that any different from what they say about climate change? What has scientists so concerned is the very fact that you are struggling with - that we cannot predict with certainty what the consequences of warming will be. We have some pretty good ideas in some areas, but the climate system is so complex that it is beyond our ability to make precise predictions. I have never understood why some people view this as cause for complacency. In fact, it boggles the mind.

Since there is no way we can stop CO2 emissions without either wrecking our economy or giving dictatorial powers to people who should never have such power, I say we better start getting used to living in a more tropical world.

The short response to 400 PPM is "So what"? As Bjorn Lomborg pointed out in his very well researched book "Cool It", the cost of reducing CO2 in the short run is so much more than the potential benefits, that it's simply not worth taking action other than research into renewable energies. These types of articles tend to foster emotional demands for esoteric technologies and poorly thought out tax increases that cause far more harm than good.

First, there is no longer any debate in scientific circles that more CO2 leads to a warmer planet; that debate started about 100 years ago and was pretty much settled roughly 50-60 years ago. The debate in scientific circles is whether the elephant is 'very large', or just 'large'. Please don't allow yourself to be mislead into thinking the elephant might not exist.

The 2 degree C limit is somewhat arbitrary, but at that point precipitation patterns will have shifted ~6 degrees of latitude poleward, heat wave events will be covering ~20% of the globe on average, and we will be committed to sea level rise of tens of meters. Where do you think we should aim as a limit?

I think you misunderstand that the term "greenhouse" is used because the end result is the same (retention of heat leading to warming), not the mechanism. It is a lot simpler than explaining the physical chemistry/thermodynamics involved.

In my opinion, skepticism isn't necessarily a prescription for inaction.

Denialists demand we continue at full speed down the foggy motorway into what seem to be brakelights.

Alarmists (the hysterics)demand an immediate emergency stop and u-turn regardless without looking to see what danger is following right behind us.

In any case a reasoned application of brakes would give us time to consider options such as u-turn, detour, pulling over to the side of the road, or even resuming our original journey. Slowing down our travel might even improve our fuel efficiency and increase the potential range we might travel on with the supplies in our tank!

Hopefully my metaphor is clear.

It's really too bad that both sides of the issue seem to already have made up their mind about what course of actions they prefer - out of economic and consumption interests or pre-existing hate and envy of the power of industry, cars and oil companies.

Neither side is willing to examine the evidence and options and come up with an approach based on that preferring instead to hold on to their "original" prescriptions and to just seek evidence that supports that favored course of action.

No Kiwi. It was the media citing a minority view held among only a few scientist.

Quite something else from the strong scientific consensus about the significance of CO2.

Anthony Watts is a former weather reader without any scientific qualifications, and his weatherstations.org project only ever delivered evidence that the US data on warming are valid. He was on the list to receive $10,000 from the Heartland Institute in those leaked documents. Enough said.

But look at this paper, authored by NOAA scientists: ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/131047.pdf

"An enduring popular myth suggests that in the
1970s the climate science community was predicting “global cooling” and an “imminent” ice age, an observation frequently used by those who would undermine what climate scientists say today about the prospect of global warming. A review of the literature suggests that, to the contrary, greenhouse warming even then dominated scientists’ thinking about the most important forces shaping Earth’s climate on human time scales. More importantly than showing the falsehood of the myth, this review shows the important way scientists of the time built the foundation on which the cohesive enterprise of modern climate science now rests."